Inmate pleads insanity in cellmate's strangulation

A Stark County man was charged yesterday with killing his cellmate in the Ross Correctional Institution on Jan. 11.

Randy Ludlow, The Columbus Dispatch

A Stark County man was charged yesterday with killing his cellmate in the Ross Correctional Institution on Jan. 11.

Logan Alan Murphy, 21, was arraigned in Ross County Common Pleas Court and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to aggravated murder in the strangulation of Michael A. Ferrara Jr., 34.

Prison officials said that a corrections officer found Murphy sitting on top of the unconscious Ferrara while holding a sheet in the segregation cell they shared.

Ferrara died two days before he was scheduled to be freed after serving a four-year sentence for burglary, receiving stolen property and misuse of credit cards in Cuyahoga County.

Murphy is serving a two-year prison sentence for burglary, breaking and entering, and vandalism in Stark County. He had been scheduled to be freed on May 11. Judge Michael Ater set Murphy’s bond at $1 million.